What if the next terrorist attack in America didn’t target buildings or airplanes or humans, but our economy?Could skillful use of hedge funds accomplish what al-Qaeda has always wanted, the downfall of the west?

In his debut novel, a financial thriller called “The Fund,” international investment banker H.T. Narea imagines — with alarming realism — how it could be done. Luckily, at least in his fictitious account, there is an American who can stop it. Her name is Kate Molares, she works for the Defense Intelligence Agency, and she has just spotted suspicious activity that could be the crucial clue in finding the bad guys. If she can do it in time. It’s a mission that is too big to fail.

Listen to H.T. Narea

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Don’t see a player here? Click on this link to listen, or right click and “Save As” to download.

Nick Heller used to do black ops for the government. Now he’s a freelancer, a “private spy,” in thrillers by New York Times bestselling novelist Joseph Finder.

In Finder’s latest, Heller has moved back to his hometown of Boston, where old friend Marshall Marcus calls on him to help when Marcus’s teenage daughter is kidnapped by some unusually nasty people. They’ve buried Alexa alive, with a threat to kill her — live on the internet — unless their demands are met.

But Marcus is oddly reluctant to comply.

Finder calls his book “Buried Secrets.”

Listen to Joseph Finder

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Don’t see a player here? Click on this link to listen, or right click and “Save As” to download.

A woman whose child, and mother, are in trouble finds that instinct kicks in, at the outset of Karin Slaughter‘s thriller “Fallen.” But the woman in this case, Faith Mitchell, is also a cop, and her instinct to come to her family’s rescue only gets her in more trouble.

Before it’s over three men are dead, her mother is missing, and now Faith is in the uncomfortable position of being a suspect.

And all this happens in the first few pages of “Fallen.”

Listen to Karin Slaughter

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Don’t see a player here? Click on this link to listen, or right click and “Save As” to download.

Electricity is the weapon of choice for the sinister killer in Jeffery Deaver‘s ninth thriller featuring his series hero Lincoln Rhyme. A shocking spree begins with an explosion at a power substation that incinerates a bus, and things just get worse from there, in “The Burning Wire.”

Listen to Jeffery Deaver

Don’t see a player here? Click on this link to listen, or right click and “Save As” to download.